Twenty photographers whose images capture the rich diversity of people, cultures, neighborhoods, architecture, and feelings in New York….Eli Siegel said in his talk What of New York and Poetry?: “You can use a point to get to the whole world, and New York is a good place to begin to be fair to reality as such.”

Prints, Paintings, Pastels,Sculpture, with critical comment

“He was brilliant, both in printmaking and painting…. There was this profundity in him, and this sense of humanity. And it was developed through Aesthetic Realism. He was a vital force in the art community for many years.”—Will Barnet, Artist

Part One of this exhibition explored the dramatic relation of Surface & Depth in the art of painting. We now show how these opposites are boldly, subtly made one in contemporary drawings, prints, watercolors, and pastels by eleven artists.

“Steve Poleskie’s rich still lifes of daily objects, captivating in brilliant sunlight and deep shadow; Perry Hall’s acute observations of city buildings, objects, and happenings, where sharpness and softness mingle in many and surprising ways; and the diverse work of Amy Dienes, from an intimate portrait of the heart of a flower, to an awesome panoply of clouds.”—Carrie Wilson, TG Coordinator

First shown at Flushing Library, features photographs of many beloved New York landmarks, with comments from the popular series of talks based on Aesthetic Realism by Anthony Romeo, Dale Laurin, John Stern, Carrie Wilson, and Vincent DiPietro.

William Behnken

APR – NOV 15, 2008

The Print & Your Self

Work—innovative and sincere—by eight contemporary printmakers. Surface and depth, dark and light, fact and imagination are brought together with subtlety and surprise in every beautiful print. And we can learn about these and other opposites in people, nations, ourselves, through the printmaker’s art!

Dorothy Koppelman

SEPT 12, 2007 – APR 2008

Line, Shape, Color: The Artistic & Human Drama

Ten artists in various styles and media—all showing the meaning of these great sentences from Eli Siegel’s The Opposites Theory: “Shapes widen and narrow; come to a point and curve; rise, fall—and these things we do too. The drama of colors and shapes and lines is humanity’s drama.”

“The purpose of photography is to create an emotion about the world through what has been carefully seen and selected.” —Eli Siegel, Afternoon Regard For Photography. What makes a classic black & white or the latest digital color photograph stir us?

“In 1955 The Terrain Gallery opened with the extravagant idea that 1) beauty could not only be talked about but defined; 2) that all the arts had something in common; 3) that art and life were integrally related. All this was in the great philosophy of Aesthetic Realism as we had studied it with its founder, critic and poet Eli Siegel.” — Dorothy Koppelman, Founding Director, from the announcement